A foolysh consystency is the hobgoblyn of lyttle mynds.

Google Popups and Food: Crittenden and Tech Corners (Reply)

A thing that the Google catering team does is to have "pop-up" community events at various campuses. These typically feature a large number of "social" venues like tents and sofas, a stage and speakers for live performances, and of course... food!

My team recently moved from Mountain View to Sunnyvale. As if to bid us farewell, they had a pop-up at Crittenden!

The weather was a bit overcast but pretty nice, considering the unusually rainy March we've had.

"Hello, Spring!"

This is one of the social venues - a cozy tent where you can meet with 6-8 others while nomming on your snack of choice.

I didn't actually try these, but they look good... if you're into the whole 'salty pieces of meat' thing.

These "toasted fennel chicken flatbread" were really tasty though!

These chicken tostadas were delicious too!

Yum! Speaking of salty pieces of meat...

For refreshment, they had some alcoholic beverages, and this "lavender sage lemonade."

I tried some of the pickled strawberries. Tasted like they had been combined with oranges. Yow! Zesty, but pretty tasty.

This was one of several dessert offerings: the humble rice krispies treats.

These strawberry ricotta parfaits were great. ^_^

There were also several food trucks parked on campus, probably because they had shut down one of the workplace cafeterias for renovation. I opted to get the savory churros in honor of John Scalzi. They were tasty, pretty much flat fried chips of dough, with refried beans, guacamole, and a fried egg on top in case you weren't in enough danger of a heart attack from just the churros.

Then, another pop-up, well, popped up at Tech Corners, the new campus to which they moved my team! A lot of the food was the same as the Crittenden spring event, so I opted to just take a couple of pictures:

A glimpse of my new workplace!

I didn't actually try these but they appeared to be either frozen bananas rolled in granola, or frozen ice cream. They looked pretty tasty.

The new workplace, Tech Corners, has a number of restaurants: two that offer a variety of food, a dedicated-burger cafeteria, a pho cafeteria, a sandwiches-and-soup-and-salad-bar cafeteria, a vegetarians cafeteria, a Mexican cafeteria... And a sit-down "fancy" restaurant named Share that offers food a definite cut above the rest. It requires a reservation but supports walk-in as long as there's space, and you get first a salad-and-bread offering, then the entree for the week's menu.

Here's what they had the first time I was there:

A pretty straightforward salad with a vinaigrette of some sort, and flatbread with a choice of several things to dip the bread into.

Blackened trout served on wild rice. I'm under the impression you can eat the scales, but I've always just peeled that off and eaten the fish without. There was a fancy verde sauce of some sort.

A different kind of salad! I seem to recall it had barley or something in there. One of the bread dips was olive oil with balsamic vinegar, I think.

Mmm, skirt steak, with a variety of root vegetables.

Moving workplaces is always a hassle but... The last campus, Crittenden, had a sit-down restaurant, Baadal, which served Indian food, and I've never really cared for Indian food. So, Share is a definite improvement.